Choices

10

Choices

    “Gidday, Sloane,” said Cal Wainwright levelly.

    “What are you doing here?” gasped Sloane, staggering back in her new doorway.

    “Come over for Ingrid’s wedding.”

    “What?” she gulped.

    “She asked me,” he said mildly.

    Sloane peered past him, but thank goodness, there didn’t seem to be any sign of Mr and Mrs Wainwright.

    “Redecorating, are you?” he said mildly.

    “What? Oh.” She looked down limply at her baggy, paint-smeared, grimy navy tee-shirt and very, very old, baggy jeans. And paint-spattered sneakers. “Yes. Well, not re-, more just decorating, the place was all pale cream when I moved in.”

    “I’d have said that was your style,” he murmured.

    “Well, it isn’t,” said Sloane, frowning, and beginning to wonder, the initial shock having worn off, what he was doing, not just in Sydney, but literally here, on her doorstep, at nine-thirty of a fine April morning. –Ingrid and Ward had decided they might as well get married pretty well straight away, once they’d made up their minds to it. Added to which, Ingrid had added cheerfully to her sisters, it gave them a bloody good excuse not to invite the entire Andersen clan. Not to mention Dad’s ghastly rellies in Queensland. Aunty Dora, the girls had translated with no difficulty whatsoever.

    “Can I come in?”

    “Yes,” said Sloane feebly. “Come in. It’s a mess, though.”

    Cal came in. He looked with interest at the front passage. Its walls were now a glowing deep blue: painted, then polyurethaned over that to give a lacquered look. The cream carpet had been removed, and cork tiles put down. Ingrid had urged Sloane to go for parquet, but she’d found out how much it cost. Anyway, the cork’s colour-tones were very similar. There were several coats of polyurethane on the tiles. The “Persian” hall runner, in very dark shades of crimson and blue, was entirely fake, probably not even Belgian, it was so fake, but nevertheless it looked really good in the subdued light of the blue passage. Sloane had left the banisters as they were: varnished a light golden shade. Ingrid had presented her with a little side table which looked almost antique: it wasn’t real rosewood but it looked like it, and it had little fluted brass feet on its slender legs and little brass handles on its little drawers. Kitten had given her a brass pot complete with a lacy maidenhair fern to sit on it, and Melodie, Nikki and Jay had together contributed a large gilt-framed mirror to hang above it. And Kitten had with her own hands unplugged the phone and replaced it with a fake antique one: brass and cream plastic pretending to be ivory. The blue and white ginger jar which sat between the pot and the phone and which secretly Sloane liked best of all the presents in her new passage was from Ward. A real one, it had had real ginger in syrup in it. Sloane had always rather liked him, but at the moment of the discovery of the ginger she had decided firmly that Ward Reardon was a very nice man, and that if Ingrid let him down— Well, she’d certainly let her know what she thought of her! Opposite the mirror, and, indeed, occupying a very large section of that wall, was a large picture in a gilt frame.

    Cal came in and looked around with approval. “Nice. Needs a coat stand,” he decided.

    “Um—yes, well, all in good time,” said Sloane limply.

     He nodded, and turned to the picture. “Goya?”

    It was a full-length portrait of a little dark-haired boy. She’d had the print for years, but never put it up before, there hadn’t been anywhere that suited it. Secretly she’d always pretended the little boy was hers. “Yes,” she said limply.

    “We’ve got a Victorian thing in storage that’s a bit like it: based, on it, I think: same pose. Mum thinks it’s old-fashioned. I’ve had it cleaned but she still won’t hang it.”

    “I see,” said Sloane limply. “Um—yes, leave your hat on the table, Cal. Come through.”

    Cal left his wide-brimmed Akubra on the hall table and followed her into the sitting-room.

    “This room’s almost finished,” said Sloane nervously.

    Cal looked round it in amazement. Sloane had covered the walls with a deep gold brocade. The room featured a small bay window, and the three tall panes were hung with deep-slatted planter’s shutters in a warm, golden-tan varnished wood. The window frame was a wide, old-fashioned one, stripped and varnished. He went over to it and ran his hand over it. “I thought this place was brand new?”

    “Yes. That frame’s recycled. Um—Dad paid for it. He’s been great: he’s helped me do a lot of this. I couldn’t have afforded decorators, and it was a bit much for me to manage on my own,” said Sloane in a small voice.

    Cal nodded. “Yeah, he’s quite a handy bloke. –I like this effect,” he said. “No curtains?”

    “I can’t decide,” she admitted.

    “Mm. You might go for plain velvet: straight.” He looked round slowly. The room was all soft, warm shades of gold, tan and brown. The floor looked like wood, but it was actually that slot-together stuff made of bamboo: there had been quite a choice of colours and the one Sloane had picked out formed a plain, soft, pale golden expanse. The ceiling and the mouldings had been left the original pale cream: the effect suited the room, lightening it a little. There was a modern gas fire in the wall opposite the door, set in an old-fashioned fireplace: more varnished wood. “Recycled, too?” he said, nodding at it.

    “Mm.”

    He nodded again, silently looking round the room.

    Sloane swallowed and said in a high voice: “Um, the suite’s recycled.”

    “I like it,” he said with a smile.

    The suite was cane-backed mahogany with down-filled cushions re-covered in a heavy satin-look fabric in the same gold shade as the walls.

    “It’s very comfortable,” she said limply.

    “Yeah, I know: you wouldn’t remember, but we once had a suite that style at Muwullupirri: in that room that Dad reckons is a morning-room. Mum hated it, so she got rid of it. Well, Pete inherited the sofa!” he said with a grin.

    “Really? It took ages to find this. Dad and Kitten and I looked for weeks on end, and we couldn’t agree on anything, and we were all getting rattier and rattier, and then— Well, you’ll never guess who found it!” said Sloane with a sudden laugh.

    “Uh—young Melodie?”

    “No. Think of the most unlikely person in connection with interior décor.”

    “Your mum,” he said, poker-face.

    Sloane broke down in giggles, nodding helplessly.

    “Blow me down flat,” invited Cal, grinning broadly.

    “I shouldn’t laugh,” said Sloane weakly, blowing her nose. “She insisted on paying for it and on paying to have it re-covered professionally. They’ve both been awfully good to me.”

    “They are your parents,” he said noncommittally.

    “Yes, but—” Sloane broke off.

    Cal eyed her drily. “Have you ever actually asked them for anything, before?”

    “No,” she said, turning bright red. “And I didn’t actually— Well, Dad said was there anything they could do, and—um—I said any help he could give me— But I didn’t mean for them to spend their money on me!” she ended, rather loudly.

    “Probably been waiting years for the chance,” he drawled.

    Sloane had a horrid feeling he was right: Dad had absolutely leapt at the opportunity to help her do the place up, and Mum had voluntarily driven miles round Sydney in her lunch hours—which normally she never even bothered to take—looking for bits of furniture. “Mm. Um—well, I think Ingrid deciding to marry Ward has sort of—um—galvanised them, or something. Mind you, they were never like this when she married Rick Venning.”

    “Aw, yeah: I’d forgotten she was married before,” he said indifferently. “So will you be putting a bit more furniture in here? A china cabinet’d look good.”

    “Yes, or a Huon pine commode, I’ve seen just the thing in the Art Gallery of New South Wales!” said Sloane with a loud laugh. “I haven’t got any china, as such, Cal!”

    “You wannoo ask Dick to buy you a dinner-set,” he drawled.

    “Shut up. I do not!” said Sloane, turning red again.

    “So what are you working on, now?”

    “Eh? Oh. Well, come on through, I’m puddling around in the dining-room.”

    Many-paned glass doors now connected the dining-room and sitting-room: Dick had pointed out that if she walled the dining-room off, it wouldn’t get any outside light at all. They went through. Cal looked at the mess, and grimaced.

    Sloane sighed. “I had a hard enough time putting the brocade up in the sitting-room. But I had this great book, you see, it told me exactly how to do it. But this beastly wallpaper’ll be the death of me. And now that I’ve spent a small fortune on it, I don’t know that I like it, after all!”

    “Uh-huh,” agreed Cal noncommittally.

    The wallpaper was a gilded jacquard design on a bright emerald ground. Sloane’s idea had been to have it a feature of the room, but the woodwork all plain white. The cream carpet had been left, for the moment, but in a heavy roll upstairs she had a giant fake-Persian square in shades of green and scarlet, which she was now having doubts about, too.

    “So,” she said with a sigh, suddenly sitting down on a paint-spattered kitchen chair, “shall I put it up and then decide I hate it? What do you reckon?”

    Cal picked up a roll of it and unrolled a bit, holding it up against the wall. “I see. You’ll keep the white woodwork, will you?”

    “Considering I’ve just finished painting it: yeah,” she said heavily.

    “Look, it could look great. Only what in God’s name could you wear in a room like this? –Well, don’t ladies think of that sort of thing?” he said with a laugh as she goggled at him.

    “Yes. Oh, help. Black or white. Or—or red, I suppose. I’ve got a scarlet and green rug,” she revealed feebly.

    “Black or white, then.”

    She passed a hand over her hair. “Yeah. Um—well, a pale fawn, maybe... What an idiot I am! I got carried away: I saw a picture of a stupid stately home in a stupid English mag—”

    “Yeah!” he said with a laugh. “You’ll need the Georgian dining set, of course!”

    “Hah, hah. You’re right, though. Well, Victorian mahogany, at the very least. I’ve got this wooden chair,” said Sloane, tapping its seat, “and that hideous old table: it’s what Dad and me have been doing the pasting on.”

    “Uh-huh.” It dated from the Fifties, at a guess, but it wasn’t a trendy Fifties piece. It was edged in fluted metal, yes, and it had the skinny metal legs to match, but its original surface had been replaced with tacked-on vinyl. “Come on, I’ll give you a hand!” he said with a laugh. “If you hate it, I’ll paint over it for you!”

    “A pot of paint is all I’ll be able to afford, after this do,” said Sloane with a sigh. “I put the wallpaper on my Visa card. Then I tried to buy petrol— It was a very embarrassing moment.”

    “Mm,” said Cal, his amiable, not unhandsome tanned face crinkling into an affectionate smile. “Come on, then. Got any lengths cut to size?”

    “Y— No, you can’t in those clothes!” she gasped in horror.

    Cal removed his smart brown leather bomber jacket. Sloane had thought the shirt under it, though a casual enough style, and tie-less, was silk: now she saw she was right. “You absolutely can’t get wallpaper paste on that good shirt, Cal.”

    “All right,” he said amiably. He removed it, and wandered through to the sitting-room with it and the jacket, while Sloane was still sitting there blushing like an idiot. His body was brown and lean—he’d lost quite a bit of weight since New Year’s—and— Well, she was an idiot, that was all! She must have seen Cal Wainwright without his shirt about a million times.

    “Don’t ask me to take my pants off,” he said mildly, coming back. “R.M. Williams’s best though they are.”

    “All right, get paste on them,” said Sloane, getting up and avoiding his eye. “These bits are ready to go.”

    “You paste, I’ll hang.”

    Sloane had been about to say he could paste. Had Cal Wainwright ever hung a piece of wallpaper in his life? Didn’t Ma Wainwright just summon up the decorators from Adelaide when she wanted to cover the cabbage roses with more bloody cabbage roses? Limply she picked up the paste brush.

    Three quarters of an hour later, when Dick Manning walked in whistling, they were hard at it, and the room, which admittedly was not very big, was almost finished.

    “So ya found it okay,” he said mildly.

    “Yeah,” agreed Cal mildly.

    “Dad, if you knew Cal was coming over, why didn’t you warn him that the place was in a mess— Oh, never mind.” said Sloane, passing a paste-y hand through her hair.

    “Didn’t know ’e was gonna strip and start wallpapering, did I?”

    “You might’ve guessed, he’s from the same tradition of male do-any-job-yourselfers as you are!” she said hotly.

    “Yeah. Whaddabout breakfast?” said Dick Manning extra-mildly.

    “Breakfast? For Heaven’s sake, Dad! What was stopping you getting your own breakfast in your own house?”

    “Largely the facts that both of us forgot to buy anything for it and the fridge is full of stuff for the bloody wedding breakfast and your mother’s taken to screaming at me every time I go near it. –Some of those,” he said with a wink at Cal.

    Sloane sighed. “I’ve got instant coffee, milk and sugar. There’s plenty of pasta, though, if you fancy cooking some up for breakfast.”

    “Cheese?”

    “No.”

    Dick held up the plastic bag he was carrying. “Better have these, then.”

    “What are they?” said Sloane limply, ignoring Cal’s sniggers.

    “English muffins; you like them?” he demanded of Cal.

    “Uh—dunno. Don’t think Mum ever gets those.”

    Dick nodded. “Too new-fangled. Never had ’em when I was a kid. Or when I was Sloane’s age, come to think of it. Bit like crumpets, but slightly less likely to tempt you to eat half a pound of butter at a time with ’em. –I’ve brought the butter. Won’t tell ya what she eats instead of butter, it makes strong men blench. I will tell ya it tastes of coconut oil, though.”

    “They all do,” he agreed.

    “I buy Flora, and it tastes very nice!” said Sloane crossly.

    “Low fat, low salt, makes ya wonder what the fuck it has got in it,” Dick explained to Cal.

    “Dad!” shouted Sloane crossly.

    “Have you had any breakfast?” replied Dick.

    “Uh—no. Well, a cup of—”

    “She gets ratty as Hell if she doesn’t get some breakfast down her. Like her mum. Won’t admit it, of course. Ya spend the entire morning wondering where you’ve put ya foot in it—”

    “Yeah. Drop it, Dick,” said Cal, grinning. “You want me to get the breakfast, Sloane?”

    “Brunch,” Sloane corrected limply. “Um—no, thanks, Cal: it’s chaos in there.”

    The kitchen door was closed: Cal opened it interestedly. “Being re-wired?”

    “It’s all Ingrid’s idea. Her and Ward own most of this place,” she explained with a sigh. “The man came, he promised to get it finished, and he went away.”

    “I’ll do it,” said Dick cheerfully.

    “Isn’t that illegal, in the Big Smoke?” drawled Cal.

    “Nah. Well, yeah, but I’m a registered electrician.”

    “It’s true. All the engineers at the uni are,” said Sloane heavily.

    Dick winked at Cal. “This explains why no wiring ever gets done round their own homes, ya see. But let’s eat first. Is the power on, Sloane?”

    “It’s on, but I dunno what you imagine you’re gonna toast those muffins on, Dad. The toaster’s in one of those cupboards that Half-dismantled Stove Number One is entirely blocking.”

    “What did you cook on last night?” her father replied.

    “Neither of those two stoves, that’s for sure!” said Sloane with feeling. “My little one-element burner: it’s on the bench over there.”

    So it was. “Best buy you ever made,” he said cheerfully, going in.

    “Yeah. Well, I certainly don’t need a giant ceramic stove-top: I think Ingrid’s gone mad!”

    “Nesting instinct,” said Dick in a vague voice.

    Inexplicably Sloane went very red. “Yes,” she said shortly. “Come on, Cal, we can finish the bit over the door while Dad mucks around in there.”

    Amiably Cal joined her in finishing the bit over the door.

    … “Well,” said Dick over the last of the muffins, which they were eating sitting on the back step, the choice having been that or the lounge-room suite, “you two can finish the wallpapering, and I’ll get on with wiring the new stove in.”

    “Dad, the old stove’s too heavy for you to move,” warned Sloane.

    “Cal can give me a hand,” he said comfortably. “Ingrid say what she wants done with the old one?”

    “Yeah, she’s gonna put it in Ward’s weekender. –He’s got a place on the coast, Cal. Ingrid reckons it’s an incredible dump: worse than the hut before we did it up.”

    “Must be bad!” he said with a grin.

    “Yes. I think Ward only used it for fishing. Well, the stove’s going there.”

    “On what? When?” demanded Dick.

    “I dunno, Dad. Ring her and ask her.”

    “Is it going in in time for the honeymoon, or are they planning to live off fish done on the barbie?” asked Cal.

    “They’re not going there for the honeymoon,” said Sloane heavily. “Much too down-market.”

    “Bali?”

    “Hah, hah. –I admit that was Kitten’s suggestion.”

    Cal collapsed in sniggers.

    Smiling weakly, Sloane said: “No, um—Hawaii.”

    “‘Go to Hawa-ai-ee!’” sang Dick suddenly in a horrible nasal falsetto.

    “Yes,” agreed Sloane, wincing. “He said pick anywhere, and she picked anywhere.”

    “Anywhere in Ingrid’s terms has to have hot and cold running water, whaddam I saving, hot and cold running waiters, central heating, and air conditioning,” explained Dick.

    “She’s not that bad, Dad,” said Sloane, turning scarlet.

    “No, well, Hawaii’s got those, all right,” said Cal. “Very hygienic. Mum liked it.”

    “Well, exactly!” said Sloane with feeling.

    There was a short silence.

    “I’m sorry, Cal!” gasped Sloane.

    “That’s okay. That is what I meant. Wouldn’t be my first choice, unless I was on me honeymoon with a lady with nice instincts,” he said, poker-face.

    Dick collapsed in sniggers. Sloane bit her lip and stared rigidly ahead of her.

    “Where would you choose, Sloane?” asked Cal mildly.

    “Me?” she gulped. “Um—dunno. Never thought about it.”

    “Me and Karen went to the Top End,” said Dick informatively.

    “That right, Dick?”

    “Yeah. In the Wet. All her idea. It was educational, I tell ya that much. Never knew how fast snakes could swim, before.”—Sloane shuddered.—“Not that we could see any snakes, or anything, most of the time. Rained so hard we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. So we spent most of our time in the cabin, figuring out how to make you, love,” he said, patting her knee.

    “Hah, hah,” she said limply, ignoring the fact that Cal had collapsed in splutters.

    “S’pose there’re worse ways of spending a honeymoon,” mused Dick.

    “Yeah!” gasped Cal helplessly.

    Sloane stood up. “I’m gonna get on with it. You two can sit there lapsing into Aussie mateship if you like, but I’ve got better things to do.”

    Dick and Cal both immediately collapsed in splutters.

    “She’s the wrong sex for Aussie mateship, ya see,” explained Dick eventually, wiping his eyes.

    “Yeah. Well, they all are. Don’t all let it get to them like Sloane does, though.”

    “No,” agreed Dick, eyeing him warily.

    Cal got up. “Did I say Mum’s making noises about moving out of the house?”

    “Eh?” he gulped.

    Cal stared blankly at Sloane’s pocket-handkerchief back yard, which featured a lot of terracotta tiles and an extendible washing-line. “Yeah. Wants a smaller modern house. Doesn’t mean she wants to move off the place, of course. A small modern house at Muwullupirri.”

    “What do you want?” said Dick Manning after a moment.

    Cal didn’t reply. His pleasant mouth tightened.

    Dick hesitated. Then he patted his shoulder lightly, and went inside. After a few minutes Cal heard him start to whistle. “Go to Hawa-ai-ee, Hawa-ai-ee...” Presumably he had his engineer’s head in the wiring of one of the stoves and was happy. Cal drew a deep breath and went in to help her finish off the wallpapering.

    Kitten was adorning her sister’s wedding reception, which they were having in Ward’s flat, in a pale pink thing. Cal eyed it drily. Sort of draped, it was. And more than sort of tight with it. Plus a matching hat. The hat was a big one, with a huge fluffy pale pink rose on it. Not that she’d been an official bridesmaid, there had only been one, and Melodie had been it. In a green thing. She was looking skinnier. The same couldn’t be said of the Kitten.

    It was a buffet do, and Ward’s cousin or something, who had been monopolising Kitten, in spite of Mrs Cousin’s glares, had momentarily gone to forage for more food.

    “What’s all this about you maybe popping over to Muwullupirri to inflict yourself on Pete?” said Cal mildly, sitting down beside her.

    Kitten replied cautiously: “Did he tell you?”

    “Yeah, well, he does work for me, and his hut is on our land. He thought I might like to know that if a female was reported shacked up there it’d only be you. What’s going on?”

    “Nothing, much. I may pop over to Muwullupirri and stay with Pete for a bit, or I may not,” she said airily. “Me and Melodie and Jay and Nikki are going to Lallapinda for a bit of a break.”

    “I see. You all get leave every three months or so, do ya?”

    “We’ve been saving it up,” lied Kitten calmly.

    Cal took a deep breath. “Look, just watch yourself. Pete’s a decent type, he doesn’t want a heartless little customer like you buggering up his life at his age.”

    Kitten bit into a chicken savoury. She chewed hungrily. “I’m not planning to bugger up his life. And he is old enough to know what he’s doing.”

    Cal’s nostrils flickered angrily, but he didn’t try to retort. After a moment he said: “Which one is Jay, again?”

    “The Chinese one.”

    “Right. And Nikki’s the one in the peculiar sort of tan thing, she was with you over Christmas.”

    “It’s not peculiar, and it’s tangerine, you nong.”

    “I’ll give it this, it’s not as tight as that thing of yours.”

    “It isn’t my style. Not at the moment,” said Kitten with a mysterious smile.

    Cal ignored the mysterious smile: he’d learned, during his brief fling with the Kitten. “I hear you spent the last three months or so in Hugo Kent’s pocket.”

    Kitten counted on her fingers. “I suppose it was nearly three months, yes. He stayed out here longer than he originally meant to.”

    “Yeah. And?”

    “Nothing. He’s been back in England for ages, now.”

    “Right. With his wife.”

    Kitten shrugged. “They occasionally occupy the country house at the same time. So?”

    “Look, if you believed that line, you’ll believe anything!”

    “It wasn’t a line, and Hugo didn’t take me in. I’m not very take-in-able,” said Kitten smugly. She bit into another chicken savoury.

    “I see. You’ve just decided to eat yourself to death for a new distraction, have you?”

    “Eh?” said Kitten with her mouth full, goggling at him.

    “I’ve been counting. You’ve eaten seven of those things. That’s the eighth.”

    Kitten swallowed chicken savoury. “I’m hungry.”

    “Get up,” said Cal grimly.

    “Eh?”

    He took her by the elbow and gripped hard. “Come out onto Ward’s poncy balcony with me right now, Kitten.”

    “It’s blowing a gale out— Oh, all right, then.” Kitten allowed him to push her out onto the balcony. The wind whipped at her hat: she grabbed at it, glaring at him.

    Cal closed the sliding door carefully. “Three months gone, are you?”

    Kitten gasped. “How did y—” She stuck her rounded chin out. “About that, yeah. So?”

    “If it’s about that, then there’s still time to get rid of it. Just,” said Cal grimly.

    “I don’t want to get rid of it.”

    “I see: you just fancy being the mother of Hugo Kent’s bastard kid for the rest of your life, do ya?”

    “I fancy being the mother of his kid: yes,” said Kitten on a complacent note.

    Cal grabbed her elbow again. “Who the fuck’s gonna support it for the next eighteen years, Kitten?” he shouted. “And don’t bloody imagine it’s gonna be poor old Pete, because I’ll tell him myself it’s Kent’s!”

    “Don’t be an idiot! I wouldn’t try to foist it on Pete!” cried Kitten in what Cal was almost sure was genuine astonishment.

    “What is your game, then? And where does Pete fit in?”

    Kitten licked her lips, giving him a speculative look.

    “And don’t try spinning me a line, I’ve known you all your life!” he said grimly.

    “Not really. You knew me when I was a little kid.”

    “Yeah, so I know what you’re really like,” he said nastily. “Well?”

    “Um—well, I’ll tell you this much. Hugo’s going to support it. But I thought I might stay with Pete while I have it, I don’t want anyone at KRP to know about it yet.”

    Cal goggled at her. “Did he make that a condition of paying the maintenance, the bastard?”

    “Um—yeah: something like that,” said Kitten, looking at him from under her lashes.

    Cal could see she was lying. Stupid little bitch. “Just listen for a moment. Having a kid is real, Kitten, it’s not something you can give up if you don’t like it. Like those bloody violin lessons you suckered Dick into paying for.”

    “I was only ten!” she cried indignantly.

    “Yeah. Well, anyway, this kid won’t just go away. And nobody else is going to take the responsibility for feeding and housing it and paying for it to have its teeth fixed like what you had, and buying it bikes and stuff.”

    “I told you, Hugo’s going to support it.”

    “Is he, just? Well, if I was you, I’d get that in writing, with two witnesses’ signatures.”

    Kitten pouted crossly.

    “Any of your sisters know?” said Cal without hope.

    Kitten shook her head, pouting.

    “Your mum?” he said without hope.

    Kitten shrugged and shook her head.

    “No. Well, all right, it’s down to me. Get rid of it now, Kitten,” he said grimly.

    “I thought you were a moral man!” cried Kitten, suddenly turning very red.

    “I am, and I don’t approve of abortion. That doesn’t mean I approve of unwanted kids finding themselves with bloody hopeless, self-centred, spoilt little bitches like you for a mother!” shouted Cal.

    “Shut up, someone’ll hear,” she said uneasily.

    “I don’t give a fuck if the whole of bloody Sydney hears! Get rid of it while you’ve still got the choice!”

    “I have chosen, I want it, it’s my baby, and I’m not getting rid of it. –And just stop calling it ‘it’ and ‘the kid’,” she said, her jaw wobbling.

    Cal bit his lip. “Don’t you dare to bawl at your sister’s wedding.”

    Kitten took a deep breath. “I’m not bawling. And I’ve thought it all out. It’s my baby, and I want it, and I’m going to love it and look after it. Even if it wasn’t Hugo’s, I’d still want it! And don’t you dare tell Mum or anyone!”

    “Uh—no. Look, Kitten—”

    But Kitten, still gripping the hat firmly, had marched inside.

    “Shit,” muttered Cal. He was almost convinced that she did want it, silly little thing. Though she undoubtedly had no real grasp of the responsibilities involved. Well—eighteen-odd years during which she’d never be able to call her life her own? That wasn’t the Kitten Manning they knew down Muwullupirri way, that was for sure! And if she did turn up at Lallapinda pregnant... Mum’d inevitably get to hear of it. Shit.

    He went back inside, looking grim, but Kitten was careful not to be alone for the rest of the reception.

    … “I’ll drive you home, if you like,” he said in Sloane’s ear when the bridal pair had pushed off to catch their plane to bloody Hawaii.

    RightSmart had supplied staff to do all the tidying up, at Ward’s insistence, so there was nothing for Sloane to do. But she replied in a hard voice: “No, thanks. I might hang on for a bit and see if they need a hand. And I don’t think I drank as much as you did.”

    Cal hesitated. “I’m not drunk. Um—well, look, can I come round a bit later, Sloane?”

    “I don’t think so,” said Sloane, avoiding his eye. “I’m rather tired, it’s been a hectic week.”

    “Well, what about dinner tonight?”

    “Dinner? After this lot?” she said lightly, still avoiding his eye.

    Cal took her elbow gently. “What’s up?” he said in her ear.

    “Nothing,” said Sloane grimly, pulling away.

    “Um, look, I know Ingrid’s younger than you, it must have been a bit upsetting,” he fumbled.

    “What?” she said, looking up at him in astonishment.

    “Well, um—seeing your younger sister go off first,” he mumbled.

    “For the second time: yeah!” said Sloane with feeling. “Honestly! What century were you born in, Cal?”

    “Not the same as you, apparently,” he said, going very red. “Well, what about lunch tomorrow?”

    “Doesn’t the property need your services urgently?”

    “No. Look, don’t be like that,” he muttered.

    Sloane took a deep breath. She had thought, after him turning up on her doorstep like that out of the blue, that maybe, just maybe, he might have been so eager to roll up for Ingrid’s wedding because he wanted to see her again. And she’d also thought that maybe the Lallapinda revenge was a bit pointless and stupid, and that Cal Wainwright was a decent man, if his mother was a pain in the neck, and... Stupid thoughts like that. But then she’d seen him on the balcony with Kitten. She hadn’t even bothered to consider asking Kitten what it had all been about: lying, and especially lying about men, was second nature to Kitten. But it had been pretty plain that Cal had been very upset and that whatever it was he’d wanted, he’d wanted it very urgently, and Kitten hadn’t been interested in giving it to him. So why he had come round to her place, pestering her? Having his cake and eating it? Yes, very probably: they were all like that! And Kendall Burgoyne was no better or worse than the rest of them: in fact, more to be pitied than some, having got himself tied up to a stupid, selfish bitch like Joyce. And at least he wasn’t a macho clod, imbued with the Aussie mateship thing.

    So Sloane said to the macho Aussie clod who had built his frail old father an aviary, not pausing to wonder why she should feel so particularly bitter at the discovery that he still wanted Kitten: “Look, I’m tired. Ring me tomorrow, if you like. I’ll see if I’m free.”

    Cal swallowed. “All right.” He looked down at her, hesitated, and opened his mouth again; but one of Ward’s cousins came up, clapped him on the back, and announced that here was a man who could manage one for the road. Cal glanced at Sloane’s closed, uncommunicative face again, and allowed himself to be towed away into a huddle of Aussie mates.

    “Typical,” said Sloane through her teeth.

    The wedding had been on the Monday, the wedding breakfast having been a late lunch, and the girls had all taken the whole afternoon off for it. On the Tuesday Melodie rang Kitten up at the pink nest at ten-thirty.

    “Yeah?” said Kitten with a yawn.

    “It’s me. And what if it had been Hugo Crap ringing up from the other side of the world? That’s not a very ladylike way to answer the phone!” said Melodie with a loud giggle.

    “It wouldn’t be, ya nana,” said Kitten, yawning again. “You sound very up, has something happened?”

    “Um—yeah. Sort of,” said Melodie cautiously. “Um, can you meet me and Nikki for lunch?”

    “Okay. At the building?”

    “No!” she said quickly.

    Kitten blinked, and sat up straight. “Okay: at that nice place that knows what a Caesar salad is?”

    “Eh?”

    Groaning, Kitten gave her its name and address. Reminding her that even though the menu might say things like “cannelloni” and “focaccia” that was no reason to stuff herself.

    It was a warm day. Kitten wore her pink linen suit, though with a sleeveless blouse under it in deference to the fact that it was early April. Nikki was in black: there was a lot of black around this year. That didn’t mean it suited her, though; Kitten swallowed a sigh. Melodie was in a tan suit that she’d had for a couple of years: it hadn’t looked much like linen to start with and looked even less so, now. Added to which, it now hung on her. Which of itself wasn’t a bad thing, of course.

    It was table service: they sat down, and ordered.

    “Go on,” prompted Nikki after the mineral waters had come and Melodie was just sitting there, looking at the slice of lime in hers.

    “What? Aw—yeah. Um... you know Mr Principal?”

    “Um—yeah: Victoria,” agreed Kitten. “Victoria” was Nikki’s boss. Well, not her immediate boss, or even her immediate boss’s boss, but his immediate boss. A bit of a yuppie, in his dull, conformist, grey-suited way. Drove a Mazda but had all of two thou’ invested on the Stock Exchange: that type. “What about him?”

    “He’s offered me a job,” said Melodie, looking at her sideways.

    “Permanent?”

    “Y— N— Well, as permanent as they get, these days. Year’s contract.”

    “Doing what?” asked Kitten after some thought.

    “Same as me,” said Nikki. “You know Rona? Older than us. –Yeah. Well, her husband got a job in Orange, don’t ask me why—”

    “He’s an agricultural scientist,” said Kitten in a bored voice.

    “Oh,” said Nikki blankly. “Well, anyway, I dunno why he got sent to Orange, but he did. So she left. And they advertised it, and a girl called Shanda got it, only she didn’t last, she said it was boring. Well, it is, but it’s a job.”

    “Yeah.” Kitten removed the piece of lime from her mineral water and chewed it. The other girls winced. “What’s she got, a sugar daddy?”

    “Dunno. Anyway, then they offered it to the girl that was second in line for it, only she’d got a better job by then. And then Victoria remembered that time Melodie was temping for us, so he asked her if she was interested.”

    “I had the interview this morning,” explained Melodie.

    “Without telling me,” noted Kitten grimly.

    “I thought it might not come to anything.”

    “And now that it has,” said her sister nastily, “what are you thinking? If anything.”

    “Well, you haven’t done anything!” she cried. “I’m no nearer to Roderick Kent than I always was!”

    “You’re minus thirty kilo nearer,” said Kitten grimly.

    “What good is that doing?” she cried.

    “You do look different,” said Nikki uncertainly. “Erika Stewart from the twelfth, she asked me who you were.”

    “All those girls on the twelfth are a load of nongs,” replied Melodie sourly.

    This was undeniable. Nikki looked at her dubiously.

    “Look, it’s gonna take a while.” Kitten counted on her fingers. “I’m fighting biology here,” she said grimly. “At least another six months.”

    “Till what?” said Melodie crossly.

    “Till I have Hugo Kent’s baby,” she said grimly.

    Melodie gasped. Nikki choked on her mineral water.

    “Yes. And nobody knows, so mind your mouths,” said Kitten grimly, getting up to bash Nikki on the back.

    “Thanks!” she gasped. “Heck, Kitten, are you sure?”

    Kitten sat down again. “Of course I’m sure, I’m going to antenatal classes and everything!”

    “Why didn’t you tell us?” gasped Melodie.

    “Because you, for one, can’t keep your mouth shut,” she said grimly. “And because I don’t want anyone at Crap to know yet. –Shut up,” she said as they both protested incoherently. “There is no way that that slimy snake Martin Jarrod is gonna hear about my baby until it’s safely born and hidden away where he can’t get at it.”

    “Buh-but what could he do?” faltered Melodie.

    “Before I had it? Kidnap me and force me to have an abortion. Or just bump me off quietly. And after I had it he could kidnap it, couldn’t he?”

    “Kitten, that’s a bit melodramatic,” said Nikki uneasily.

    “Maybe. But I’m not taking any chances: he hated me when I was with Hugo, and did his best to keep Hugo swamped with work so as he couldn’t come near me. –I know it didn’t work, that isn’t the point. I overheard him and Michael Pointer talking one day: Martin seems to be afraid that in the first place Hugo will give up wanting to concentrate on Crap if I’m in his life.”

    “Um—that’s reasonable, actually, Nikki,” admitted Melodie. “I mean, they usually do, with her.”

    Nikki nodded silently.

    “Hugo’s not like that. Though I might make him slow down,” said Kitten thoughtfully. “I don’t want a husband that’s dead before he’s sixty. And in the second place Martin’s idea is that if Hugo’s thinking about me, his business judgement will be affected. You know: he’ll make the wrong decisions and stuff.”

    “Yeah, I can see that,” conceded Nikki. Melodie nodded.

    “Well, it’s a load of balls, so far as Hugo’s concerned; and actually, it represents some peculiar atavism, I think,” she said, narrowing the big blue eyes. The girls looked blank. “You know: some primitive fear of women’s mysteries?”

    “Eh?” they said.

    “Never mind. Anyway, Martin Jarrod’s like that: scared of women, and especially feminine women.”

    “I think I see,” agreed Melodie dubiously.

    “Which doesn’t mean he wouldn’t get into my pants if he could,” said Kitten detachedly.

    “Kitten, that doesn’t follow!” objected Nikki.

    “It might not follow, but it’s a fact.”

    “Jay said that Graeme said him and his dad had noticed that,” admitted Melodie.

    “So—um—where does that leave us, Kitten?” quavered Nikki.

    “It leaves us where Martin Jarrod is not gonna get a sniff of the fact that I’m having Hugo’s kid. Don’t you see, it might be a boy?”

    “Kitten, we’re not living in the Middle Ages!” protested Melodie.

    “People like Hugo and the Pointers and Martin Jarrod are,” said Kitten firmly. “That’s the point.”

    “Actually, I think she’s right...” said Nikki slowly. “It could upset the apple cart for Martin Jarrod if Hugo Kent has a son. Some of the people at the building are saying that Ward Reardon won’t get the top job out here: it’ll go to Martin Jarrod. Well, I was in the lift one day with two of the suits from the nineteenth. –They seem to think you’re deaf as well as invisible!” she noted sourly.

    “Yeah. But that can work to our advantage,” Kitten assured her.

    “Yeah, it can, can’t it?” she agreed gratefully. “Anyway, it was interesting, so I rode all the way up with them. One of them said that as Roderick Kent isn’t interested in the firm and Hugo hasn’t got any sons, we might eventually end up with Jarrods heading the whole show.”

    “Yes. Martin Jarrod’s got three sons, and the two eldest are in Crap already,” said Kitten grimly as Melodie looked at her dubiously.

    “Help,” they said numbly.

    “Yeah. So we’re fighting him on two fronts, and I dunno which is the most dangerous. In the first place there’s the shorter-term thing, where he’s terrified the business will suffer if I’m in Hugo’s life. And that’s backed up by his fear of the female thing: he doesn’t know he’s got it, but that makes him more dangerous!” she said loudly. The girls looked a bit sick, and nodded. “Yeah. And in the longer term, if he’s really got ambitions to move in at the top and see his sons take over— Well! At the moment, there’s virtually no competition, is there? Hugo won’t fight him, he’s always been Hugo’s man, and Hugo hasn’t got any sons, or even any nephews. And Graeme Pointer’s a dead loss, Martin’s got nothing to fear from that direction—though mind you, I wouldn’t care to be up against ole Michael, myself. And Neil Reardon’s pretty ineffectual. –Serve them right for sending him to a poncy Pommy school,” she noted by the by.

    “Yeah. –He never took any notice of Nikki at the wedding,” Melodie reminded them glumly.

    “Shut up,” said her sister firmly. “I’m coming to that. –Well, do you get it? If Martin Jarrod doesn’t know Hugo’s expecting a baby, me and it’ll be safe for a bit. Until I’m in a position of strength.”

    “Yes,” they agreed, nodding.

    The food came: there was a lull while Melodie poked dubiously at her Caesar salad, Nikki ate prawns in a garlic sauce quickly before Kitten could tell her they were fattening, and Kitten herself engulfed Bruschetta Sicilia hungrily, though remarking disparagingly as she did so: “These sardines are tinned.”

    “Kitten,” said Melodie after a while in a shaking voice: “if you do marry Hugo, you still won’t be safe, will you?”

    “I don’t think anyone young enough to give him sons that he married would be entirely safe,” she agreed calmly. “But Hugo’s sort of life is pretty well protected when he’s at home: security guards, and so forth. Only it’ll definitely be better if I can have a son first.”

    Melodie chewed salad without enthusiasm. “How are ya gonna make Hugo marry you, though, Kitten?”

    “Maybe he’ll go all soft when he sees the baby,” offered Nikki.

    Kitten gave her a tolerant look. “It’s a possibility, yeah.”

    “So are ya gonna do like what you thought up for Jay? Set up a second house with him?” asked Melodie.

    “No. What I absolutely don’t want is for him to get comfortable with me. As—his—mis-tress,” she said clearly as they stared.

    “Oh!” they said. “Right! Yeah!”

    “I’ve got several plans,” said Kitten. “But first I’ll have to see if it’s a boy or a girl.”

    They nodded obediently.

    “So,” she said firmly: “what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna get off to Lallapinda. But I might not stay there. I might live with Pete for a bit, or else I’ll just stay with Kym.”

    “Chris Bailey’ll find out,” objected Melodie.

    “After a bit, yeah.”

    “Kitten, Nev Bailey might tell someone at the Lallapinda Management Corp, if he thinks it’s Hugo’s!” hissed Nikki.

    “He won’t think it’s Hugo’s,” said Kitten firmly.

    “So whose are you gonna say it is?” asked Melodie, swallowing.

     Nikki counted on her fingers, looking anxious. “Yeah. When’s it due?”

    “It was conceived in early January, if that’s what you’re trying to work out. What I’m gonna do, I’m gonna cry all over Chris Bailey, and tell her I went off the rails when I was back home because I thought Hugo had dumped me. So I did it with another guy, and got preggy, see? Only then Hugo did want me, and I was too chicken to let on to him!”

    “Ooh,” said Nikki in awe.

    “That’s really good, Kitten!” gasped Melodie.

    Kitten smirked. “Not bad, eh? I never even had to think it out, it just sorta came to me. Anyone want a cappuccino?”

    Everyone did. Kitten let them, so long as nobody had sugar with it.

    “So,” she said, watching Melodie eat fluff with her teaspoon, “you two have got a choice. Come and stay in SA while I change your images completely, or stay here, turn into vegetables, and marry some nong with a quarter acre.”

    The girls had gone very red.

    Melodie began crossly: “Neil Reardon didn’t even—”

    “Yes! You said! I’ll change Nikki’s image so that he will notice her! But you’ve got to commit to this thing, Nikki. –And you,” she said grimly, glaring at her sister: “have gotta get yourself out of range of all these dinky little eating-places and get some fresh air and a lot of exercise, and stay on your diet!”

    “And grow your hair,” agreed Nikki.

    Melodie licked her lips uneasily. “But Kitten, I haven’t got much money, what’ll I live on? And—and if I took this job of Victoria’s, it’d be an income for six months while we waited.”

    “No. Crunch-time. It’s not so urgent for you, Nikki, and we may still need a spy in the building. But if I leave her here, who’s gonna stop her putting that thirty kilos back on?’

    “She’s got a point, Mel.”

    “Yeah, but what’ll I live off?” wailed Melodie.

    “I’ve got stacks. Hugo left me twenty thou’ to play with,” revealed Kitten.

    “What?” they gasped.

    “It’s not that much, not even enough for a decent car. But he was having guilt feelings. Well, by him, they were guilt feelings about monopolizing my time for three months when he couldn’t offer me anything, quote, unquote,” she said on a sour note. “But actually they were guilt feelings partly about having an affaire behind his wife’s back, and partly over not being able to offer me marriage.”

    “Kitten, that doesn’t sound too good,” murmured Melodie.

    “No. But get this. On his last night, he cried, and said he was sorry he couldn’t offer me more, and if only he was ten years younger it’d be different!” she said triumphantly.

    “That’s no better!” cried Melodie.

    “It is, you idiot! Because it shows he’d started to think of me in connection with marriage, at last!”

    “I see,” agreed Nikki slowly.

    “Yeah, but he said if he was ten years younger—”

    “Ten’s better than twenty,” said Nikki.

    “Exactly! Ten’s nothing! It’s the thin end of the wedge!” said Kitten.

    “Mm. Kitten,” said Melodie, wrinkling her brow, “why don’t you just write to him and tell him you’re having a baby?”

    “It’s too much of a risk. He might come running, but then again, he might tell me to get rid of it. –It’s hard to explain. He was in a finishing-up, tidying-everything-away mood.”

    “Ugh, help! I know!” cried Nikki. “Like when Mum decided to tidy out Melissa’s room after she got married to Clyde, and she threw out all her bears!”

    “Yeah, right, and stripped the wallpaper, eh?” agreed Kitten.

    “I remember,” said Melodie. “Yes, I see... He’d want to tidy the baby away.”

    “Mm,” agreed Kitten, nodding her curly head. “It’s too soon. But give him time, he’ll start to miss me and wish he’d never busted up.”

    The girls nodded obediently.

    “I’d quite like to be an aunt,” said Melodie. “I like babies.”

    Kitten smiled at her. “Yes, me, too. ’Member the Truro twins?”

    “Yes! Weren’t they sweet?” she cried. “You remember, Nikki, Kitten and me used to babysit them! Well, Kitten, really, I was a bit young, but I used to go with her sometimes.”

    “Yeah, I remember: Mrs Truro had one of those twinnies’ pushers,” she agreed. “Cute, eh?”

    They all nodded and smiled.

    “I’ll start knitting,” decided Nikki. “And Mum’ll do you a shawl, if you like, Kitten, she’s got stacks of time on her hands, Melissa’s three are too big for anything much except jumpers and Shane won’t wear them, he reckons they’re sissy. Well, everyone told her not to do those Fairisle engines on that last one she made him, but she wouldn’t listen. The kids these days aren’t into that sort of thing. Anyway, shall I ask her?”

    “Not until I’ve got everyone at Lallapinda convinced it isn’t Hugo’s. That’ll help me to convince Mum and Dad it isn’t,” said Kitten heavily.

    “Okay. But shall I, then?”

    “Yes. Thanks. Your Mum’s shawls are gorgeous.”

    Nikki nodded, beaming.

    “Well?” Kitten then said grimly to her sister.

    Melodie jumped. “We-ell...”

    “Melodie, if you give it up now, that’ll be it. I’ll wash my hands of you. I haven’t got time to fart around, I need to be focussed.”

    Melodie gulped. “Wuh-well, how am I gonna meet Roderick Kent?”

    “I can’t tell you everything. But Plan A definitely entails us going over to stay with Aunty Ingrid for a bit. That’ll be our European base of operations.” she said with relish. “Then we can nip over to England when we need to. Jay’ll need our support, I think.”

    “Oh. Um... well, I wouldn’t mind a holiday with Aunty Ingrid.”

    “She’ll keep you to your diet!” said Nikki with a sudden loud giggle. “Hey, ’member that time she came out with that weirdo guy? I forget his name.”

    “Erik Eriksen,” said Melodie, snickering. “’Member his ribs?”

    “Yeah! You could count them, front and back!” They both collapsed in horrible sniggers.

    “He was fit as a flea, and he had a super tan,” said Kitten severely.

    “Kitten, he was weird!” protested Melodie.

    “I’m not saying he wasn’t,” she said mildly. “I am saying they were both very fit. And Aunty Ingrid certainly knows all there is to know about the right stuff to eat to keep fit.”

    “You’ll go over good, then,” noted Melodie with relish, looking the pink suit up and down. She and Nikki collapsed in sniggers again.

    “I intend to have a very fit pregnancy.”

    “Very fit on bruschetta and sardines!” gasped Nikki.

    The girls collapsed again.

    Kitten ignored this pantomime. “Well? Melodie!”

    “What? Oh,” she said weakly, mopping her eyes. “Are you really gonna go to Europe?”

    “Yes. But if you can’t be serious, you can stay behind, I personally don’t give a damn if you nab Roderick Kent or not. Me and Jay are serious about Hugo and Graeme, that’s what counts.”

    Melodie scowled horribly.

    “Victoria’ll have you if Roderick Kent doesn’t want you, Mel,” noted Nikki.

    “Shut up! That does it! All right, I’ll come to Lallapinda whenever you say!” she said angrily to Kitten.

    “Right. And to show you what I mean about your image, you can come to my hairdresser in Double Bay this arvo.” Kitten opened her handbag and got out her lipstick and mirror. She applied bright pink lipstick carefully.

    “What about me?” quavered Nikki.

    “’Pends wha’ oo really wan’,” replied Kitten, lips tensed for the lipstick.

    “Can you really get me Neil Reardon?” said Nikki in a tiny voice.

    Kitten rolled the lipstick down and put it and the little mirror away. “Yes. But you’ve got to want it enough.”

    “I do,” said Nikki, tears starting to her eyes.

    “All right, Nikki, we’ll start on your image this arvo, too. You can give them a ring at work and say you’ve got a migraine.”

    “But—” She met Kitten’s eye. “Okay.”

    “Good. –On me,” she said as they scuffled for their wallets.

    “No, it’s okay—” began Nikki.

    “All right: on Hugo,” said Kitten blandly.

    Taken unawares, Nikki gave a startled giggle.

    “I’ve worked it out: there’s enough to keep us for a while here if we need it, and for all our fares to Europe, and to keep us over there for a bit.”

    “Good,” said Melodie.

    “Ye-es. Am I coming to Europe, too?” asked Nikki doubtfully.

    “You are if you want Neil Reardon, yeah. He’s being sent to the London office in July.”

    She took a deep breath. “All right! That settles it! Count me in!”

    As much as Nikki West could be counted in for anything, Kitten already was: she’d booked the session at the hairdresser’s. But she nodded, and said: “Good.”

    Kitten had set up the full treatment for them both. Nails, facials, new make-up, the lot. Nikki emerged from it with a head of light chestnut, artfully curled on the neck, temples and forehead. The eyes were huge and smudged-looking, the eyeliner just artfully titled at the outer corners. It was almost a pixie-look: it suited Nikki’s small, neat features. Melodie emerged from it with the new length her hair had grown into fully displayed by the straightening and then very slight re-curling, just at the tips, which now sat just on her shoulders. The base colour was her natural light brown but it was delicately streaked in three shades, ranging from just lighter to very pale, almost silvery highlights. The hair was combed back behind her ears but very soft-looking as to the rest of it. The eyes were again huge and smudged-looking. The cheekbones had begun to show: they were artfully shaded with a blusher with a hint of maroon in it that picked up the dark shade of the lipstick. She didn’t look like Melodie, at all.

    “See?” said Kitten pleasedly.

    The two girls smiled weakly. They were pleased with the results: but they didn’t feel... Well, they didn’t feel like themselves.

    Sloane had expected Cal to ring her at work during the morning, but he hadn’t. She had an interview with a candidate at twelve-thirty: the woman was working at the moment and had had to make the appointment for her lunch hour. As usual in such circumstances Sloane asked why she wanted to get onto RightSmart’s books. These days people who already had jobs tended to hang onto them. Lola Hewitt replied airily that she just felt like a bit of a change: y’know? Sloane didn’t press the point. Mrs Hewitt’s references would be followed up.

    “How was she?” asked Mandy cheerfully after Mrs Hewitt had gone on her way.

    “Dunno. She looked all right. No reference from her current employer, though. But then, they might be the sort that’d sack her if they knew she was looking round for a change.”

    Mandy nodded agreement.

    “Any calls for me?” asked Sloane, trying to sound casual.

    “Yeah, they’re on your mail. Bob Sotherby: that butler job’s nearly over, he was just checking in with us. And Katie Georgopoulos rang. It’s all right, she’s happy with Mrs Rogers,” she added hurriedly. “She wants to know if we could use her sister.”

    “Don’t tell me: been a housewife for twenty-six years, did a bit of typing before she got married,” groaned Sloane.

    “Not that bad!” replied Mandy with a grin. “Forty words a minute and she’s done a Word course. But Katie says she’s an ace cook.”

    “Oh. Well. if she’s an ace cook that doesn’t panic under fire and can cope with the Mrs Rogerses of this world, we can use her.”

    “No-one can cope with Mrs Rogers except Katie!” said Mandy with a loud giggle. “Good afternoon: RightSmart; Mandy speaking,” she said smoothly into the phone.

    Sloane hovered, but it was a candidate for Gail. “That all?” she said, as Mandy hung up.

    “Yeah, none of your sisters rung.”

    “Thanks,” said Sloane, trying to smile. She retired hurriedly to her office. Boy, when the receptionist assumed that if you were expecting a call it was gonna be from your sister, you were over the hill and then some!

    She’d just sat down and was looking at the messages Mandy had left on the system for her when Mandy buzzed her. “Lunch!”

    “What?” said Sloane, jumping.

    “Lunch,” repeated Mandy firmly.

    “Help, is that the time? Um—I’ll grab a sandwich in a minute, thanks, Mandy.”

    “I’ll remind you,” threatened Mandy.

    Sloane smiled weakly. She looked glumly at the message on her screen. Ten to one—no, fifty to one, if she’d got Katie Georgopoulos to ring—the sister was hopeless. Well, hopeless but a good cook. Another Wendy, in fact. Did they need it?

    “All right, lunch!” she said irritably as the speaker on her phone made a croaking noise.

    “Not that. You’ve got a visitor, Sloane.”

    Sloane looked automatically at her watch. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

    “No. It’s Cal Wainwright,” said Mandy. Possibly it was only the speaker that sounded hoarse, and she was not actually hoarse with excitement.

    Sloane took a deep breath. “I see. Can you ask him to wait, please. Mandy? I’ll be with him in a minute.”

    “No problem!” said Mandy fervently. She usually didn’t allow herself to get that casual in front of visitors. Sloane took a deep breath.

    ... “Hullo, Cal,” she said calmly.

    Cal was sitting on a sofa. Somehow his long legs made their quite adequate reception area seem small and cramped. He got up quickly. “Gidday. Thought I’d drop in. Uh—I got a bit lost, to tell you the truth. I suppose you’ve had your lunch?”

    “No, she hasn’t, yet!” said Mandy eagerly. “She’s just finished interviewing a candidate.”

    “So that’s what you do, is it?” he said.

    “Yes. Partly,” replied Sloane foolishly. “Where are you parked?”

    “It’s all right, he’s in a parking building!” contributed Mandy. “It’s a fair walk away, though: that’s partly why he’s so late.”

    Boy, that was quick. Probably told her all about his mum’s latest plans for doing up the lounge-room at Muwullupirri, too.

    “Given that I wasn’t expecting him, he can’t be said to be late,” she said in a hard voice.

    “Late for lunch, I mean,” said Mandy immediately. “Why don’t you take him to the Alicante, Sloane?”

    It was quite near, and if rather yuppie, not too bad, though pricy. Sloane glanced at her watch. “I thought I’d just grab a sandwich at Chloe’s.”

    “They won’t have much left, at this hour,” said Mandy calmly.

    “No. Well, come on, then, Cal,” said Sloane, trying not to sound as grim as she felt.

    Cal said cheerfully: “See ya, Mandy!” and followed her out. Sloane said nothing in the lift.

    “Quite a big place,” he noted cheerfully.

    “What? Oh—the building? Mm. The rents are fairly high but not as bad as they would be if we were more central.”

    “No, right.”

    On the street he said: “Well, you wanna try that Ally place?”

    “We might as well. It’s just along here.”

    Cal looked at her sideways. “Am I holding up your work?”

    “What? No. Well, I have to eat.”

    “Yeah. Mandy was saying you usually just have a sandwich at your desk.”

    Sloane didn’t reply.

    “Dunno how you stick it all day, being stuck in an office.”

    “I get out quite a lot: I visit clients, and every so often I do the rounds to see how our contract employees are getting on.”

    “Yeah? Is that usual?”

    Sloane swallowed a sigh. “I don’t know. It’s RightSmart’s practice. The contractors appreciate it, it makes them feel like someone cares about them. And most of the clients are quite glad to see that we check up on the people we place with them. –Well, they tend to assume that’s what we’re doing,” she explained drily.

    Cal thought about it. “I get it. You’re really checking to see your workers aren’t being exploited.”

    “Yes. Well, mostly. And to see that they’re not working in unsafe environments, that sort of thing.”

    “Would they be?”

    “It can occasionally happen. Not usually in private homes, of course.”

    “I see.”

    The Alicante had a blackboard menu, and you ordered at the counter. The place was fairly busy, but there wasn’t much of a queue.

    “You’ll have to tell me what all this is,” he said unemotionally.

    Sloane didn’t bother to work out whether he was taking the Mick. “The hot dishes are mostly variations on open sandwiches.”

    “What’re these brushy things?”

    Sloane explained neutrally what bruschetta was. Adding neutrally that according to Kitten the sardines on the second choice listed were tinned.

    “Yeah, they would be. What’s this foxy stuff?”

    “Focaccia’s a different sort of bread,” said Sloane with a sigh. “They’re all nice, and it tells you there what the fillings are. Risk it.”

    “Ya don’t get all this Italian stuff over at Nearby Bay,” he drawled. “They’ve only just heard of wholegrain bread, ya know. –What are these sausages like?”

    “I don’t know, I’ve never tried them. Um—they serve them with sauerkraut, Cal,” she warned.

    “Is that what that means?”

    “Mm.”

    “Chips?”

    “I don’t think so. What do you want chips for?” she said irritably.

    “Habit? –You choose for me.”

    Sloane swallowed. “I don’t know what you’d like.”

    “I’ll just have the same as you, then,” he said mildly.

    She took a deep breath and ordered the smoked chicken and avocado for both of them. On the focaccia, yes.

    He insisted on paying, so Sloane let him. Muwullupirri’s budget could take it better than hers could.

    The Alicante always served its open sandwiches with a little salad on the side. “Did we order this?” said Cal.

    “Yes. And just stop doing the country cousin bit, will you, Cal?” she said heavily.

    “I am a country cousin. –They don’t serve sandwiches with knives and forks at Nearby Bay, ya know.”

    “No. On the other hand, you never bought that trendy gear you’re draped in at Nearby Bay, either.”

    “I wouldn’t have said it was trendy,” said Cal, embarking on his large open sandwich. With the knife and fork.

    “Rubbish, Cal, it screams ‘R.M. Williams’,” she said irritably.

    “Is that trendy, these days?”

    Sloane ignored him.

    Cal’s sandwich and its salad vanished in record time. “That was it, was it?” he said sadly.

    “All right, you should have ordered the sausages. I wasn’t stopping you.”

    “With sauerkraut. –Seems a funny sort of mixture.” Sloane stared at him and he elaborated: “Sausages and sauerkraut, but all the other stuff’s sort of Italian”

    “The bread might be, but I wouldn’t say the fillings were anything, in particular. Well, the lady that runs it’s Welsh, so what does that prove?”

    “Probably that it’s just another manifestation of the global village,” he drawled.

    Sloane reddened. “Yes, well, you can give up any idea that your representation of the country cousin’s realistic, Cal Wainwright!”

    Cal smiled a little, but merely said mildly: “I might have some cake, in a bit.”

    “Mm.” Sloane ate silently for a while. Then she said, not looking up: “How are the swans?”

    Cal looked at her bent head, and smiled. “Still pretty mangy. They’re eating good, though.”

    “That’s good,” she said with a sigh.

    “Yeah. Ollie’s cheekier than ever, the bludger. Pete reckons we’ve got him for life. Like Dad’s bloody crow. They know when they’re well off, ya see.”

    Sloane looked up and smiled. “Yes!”

    “Yeah...” he said in a vague voice. “Um... Did I mention Mum’s decided to move out of the homestead?”

    Sloane choked on a piece of lettuce. She gulped mineral water. “You said she was thinking about it. You mean she’s actually gonna do it?”

    “Yep. Rung me this morning. Definitely decided she wants a nice modern house.”

    “Cal, you’re not going to pull down Muwullupirri, are you?” said Sloane in a trembling voice.

    “Eh? No! Strewth, Sloane, you can’t think I’d do that!”

    “Well, you’ve always done everything else your Mum’s ordered you to, as long as I’ve known you, and that’s only been all my life!”

    “What?” he said, staring at her.

    “You heard,” said Sloane in a hard voice, going very red. She looked down at her plate. “So what’ll happen to Muwullupirri?”

    “Nothing’ll bloody well happen to it, I’ll live in it!” he said loudly.

    “Oh.” She swallowed. “Well, good.”

    “Dad doesn’t seem to mind, really,” he said on an uncertain note.

    Sloane sighed. “No, he wouldn’t’.”

    Cal licked his lips. “What does that mean, exactly, Sloane?”

    She frowned. “It’s only my opinion, what on earth does it matter?”

    “I want to know what you really think.”

    “Well,” she said with another sigh, “in the first place your father’s always let your mother push him around as far as anything to do with the house and so forth is concerned, so I can’t see him stopping now. And in the second place, I don’t think he’s really fundamentally interested in his surroundings. –I mean, indoors.”

    “I got that.”

    “I think he’d rather spend his time outdoors, preferably up and doing. When I was little, I can hardly ever remember seeing him inside. Though I suppose... Well, twenty years ago: I suppose he’d have been older than you are now.”

    “What?” he said, going very red. “Yeah, he bloody would! He’d have been pushing sixty, for Christ’s sake!”

    “Yes. Well, there you are, then. He’s not interested in his domestic surroundings.”

    “Oh—no,” he agreed lamely, recalled to the subject of the conversation. He looked at her doubtfully. “He doesn’t really let Mum push him around, you know.”

    “Cal, he’s like all these macho Aussie types that are nullities once their front door’s closed on them: he’s got ‘Anything for a quiet life’ engraved on his forehead,” she said heavily.

    Cal was very red. “That’s not quite right.”

    “All right, you explain it,” said Sloane on a dry note.

    “Well, you’re right when you say domestic things don’t matter to him: he doesn’t care enough to kick up when Mum does something weird. But more than that—I know you’ll say this is bullshit—but it’s a matter of manners.”

    “What?” said Sloane blankly.

    Cal was redder than ever. “Manners. The way Dad was brought up, a decent bloke doesn’t argue when his wife says she wants to paper his lounge-room in bloody great roses the size of pumpkins.”

    “I wouldn’t call that manners.”

    “No, you’d call it spinelessness, or not caring. Well, it isn’t.” Cal got up. “Want anything else? Another drink?”

    “Um—yes, I will have another mineral water, thanks.”

    “Right.” He went off to the counter.

    Sloane stared at his straight back, frowning.

    When he came back, with a slab of cake for himself and a mineral water for her, she said: “So would you kick up if your wife wanted to paper your lounge-room in cabbage roses?”

    “Cabbage roses: I knew there was a name for them!” Cal ate a mouthful of cake, looking thoughtful.

    Sloane knew it was put on: she glared. “Well?”

    He swallowed cake. “I’m not Dad’s generation.”

    “What does that mean?” she said crossly, as he didn’t seem prepared to elaborate.

    “In the first place, I am quite interested in my domestic surroundings. Enough to want to see the back of all those cabbage roses, anyway. And in the second place... I suppose I don’t automatically assume that the house is my wife’s preserve so it’s bad manners to object when she wants to do something weird to it. And in the third place, I wouldn’t want a relationship where I was expected to be a nullity the moment me front door closed behind me: where the Hell didja get that one from?” he said, frankly grinning.

    It was Sloane’s turn to redden. “From observation!” she snapped.

    “Yeah, well, I suppose there is still a fair bit of it about. Isn’t it more Mum and Dad’s generation, though?”

    “No,” she said grimly. “—I’m sorry: I have to get back to work.”

    Cal looked at his watch. “The service is faster than what it is in Adelaide. But I suppose we have been a while. –Come on, I’ll walk you back.”

    “Finish your cake,” said Sloane with a sigh.

    “Are you pushing me around?” he said, extra-mildly.

    “All right, don’t!” she snapped.

    Smiling, Cal finished his cake, and got up. “Come on, then.”

    Sloane got up. “When are you going back?” she said abruptly, when they were out on the street.

    He took her arm gently. “In a day or two, I s’pose. I don’t like the Big Smoke.”

    “No.”

    They walked on silently.

    “Will you come to Muwullupirri for Easter?” he said.

    Sloane gulped. “Why?” she said feebly.

    “Because I’m asking you,” he returned mildly.

    “Um, I—I can’t, Cal, it’s too far. I mean, I can’t afford to fly, after putting all my money into the flat, and—um—quite apart from the petrol, I wouldn’t fancy driving all that way by myself, actually,” she finished in a low voice.

    “No, it is a fair way.”

    “Only half a continent!” said Sloane with a forced laugh.

    “Yeah. I usually come through Victoria, meself, when I drive it.”

    “You would do,” she said, staring.

    “No: what I mean is, Pete tried it through Broken Hill, once.”

    “What?” she gasped.

    “Yeah. Think ’is logic was, it’s in New South Wales, Sydney’s in New South Wales—” He shrugged. “Took forever.”

    “I should think so!” Sloane traced lines on an imaginary map. Cal watched her in some amusement. “Mad,” she concluded.

    “Mm. –I’ll drive over and fetch you,” he said mildly.

    She went very red. “Don’t be silly, it’s practically Easter already: you’d more or less have to turn round and come straight back.”

    “I don’t mind.”

    Arguing about anything with Cal Wainwright—not that she had done, for more than fifteen years—but arguing with him about anything, Sloane now recalled all too clearly, was like trying to move a hunk of granite. “No, I can’t really spare the time,” she said firmly.

    “You mean you think Muwullupirri’s bloody boring and you don’t want to spend Easter bored to tears in the Outback: I get it.”

    “No!” cried Sloane crossly. “That isn’t it! I love Muwullupirri!”

    “All right, you think I’m bloody boring and you don’t want—”

    “No! Stop putting words in my mouth!”

    Cal bit his lip. “Um—if it’s Mum, she will still be in residence, but we can clear out most of the day.”

    Sloane turned scarlet. “No, don’t be ridiculous. I just—I just can’t... Look, Cal,” she said. swallowing hard, but looking up determinedly into his face: “you can’t just issue a casual invitation to someone to cross half a continent for the weekend. It—it might just have washed, when your dad was young, but times have changed and—and you must be self-aware enough to realise that that sort of invitation isn’t the same as asking someone round the corner for a pizza. And don’t give me that dinkum-Aussie crap about huge distances not meaning anything, or something, because that won’t wash, either: it costs hundreds of dollars to get over to Muwullupirri!”

    “You mean coming all that way for Easter would imply some sort of commitment that you don’t want?”

    “It would for me, yes,” said Sloane grimly.

    “Mm. Well, that’s why I asked you,” he said mildly.

    Sloane found her hands were shaking a little. Possibly if she hadn’t seen him out on Ward’s balcony with Kitten... “I don’t want to rush into anything,” she said in a low voice. “I’m working very hard at making a life for myself, here. And—and we hardly know each other, really. I can more or less count the times I’ve seen you in the last ten years on one hand.”

    “Yeah. I thought we might use Easter to get to know each other: well, to get re-acquainted.”

    “I can’t,” she said faintly, swallowing. “Not—not just yet.”

    “No. Um—if I stayed on here for a bit?

    “No,” said Sloane in a low voice. “I need time to think.”

    Cal sighed. “Yeah. I see.”

    They walked on in silence.

    “I—I do like you.” said Sloane in a trembling voice, “but I’ve just never thought of you in that way.”

    “No, right. I’ve thought of you. Only I decided you were too young for me.”

    “When?” she said in amazement.

    Cal sighed. “About ten years back. Don’t think you were even twenty. You were a bit plumper in the face, in those days. Um—it was that Christmas you had a pinkish dress with only one strap, kind of tied on the shoulder. You wore it to a hop at Nearby Bay.”

    “Apricot,” said Sloane limply. “That was a really boring—” She broke off.

    “Yeah, wasn’t it?”

    “I vaguely remember you didn’t stay long enough to be bored,” she recalled uncertainly. “Um—wasn’t it just before you went on that trip to look at exotic breeds of cattle, or something?”

    “Sort of. It was a bloody Country Party thing, really. Bob Dangerfield was all fired up about it, and he wanted me to go, but I’ve never been into— Anyway, I went. Thought I’d better not hang round.”

    Sloane gaped at him. “You’re not trying to say because of me?”

    “Yeah. Well, work it out. You were what? Nineteen? I was well into my thirties.” He shrugged.

    After a moment Sloane said in a high, shaking voice: “That didn’t stop you getting mixed up with Kitten a few years later!”

    “No, well, true. Though she was a bit older. Well, all right, I’m only human,” he said on a sour note.

    Sloane’s jaw trembled. “You idiot,” she said in a low voice.

    “Yeah, well, I’m not the only one,” he said heavily.

    “What? No: I meant—” She stopped, chewing on her lip.

    “Do you mean that if I’d gone for it ten years back I might have been in there with a chance?” he said, staring.

    “I don’t know,” said Sloane on a doleful note. “Girls can be pretty stupid... I thought you were old. But I remember being peeved at that hop because you were ignoring me... Oh, forget it! What does it matter?”

    Cal’s grip tightened on her elbow. He bent his head down very close to hers and said: “If you could sort of fancy me then, it’s—it’s a hopeful sign, isn’t it?”

    Sloane’s heart beat very fast but she said steadily: “That isn’t the problem. You must know you’re an attractive man, Cal.”

    “No!” he said with a startled laugh. “It’s not the sort of thing a bloke thinks—”

    “Don’t give me that standard macho-man, modest dinkum-Aussie bullshit, Cal, it makes me want to scream,” said Sloane through her teeth.

    “Uh—look, Sloane,” he said carefully, “my powers of expression may not be up to what you’re used to, in the Big Smoke, and—and all right, I do tend to fall back on clichés. You can say it’s in order to hide my feelings, if you like. It’s what most of the country does, for better or worse. But I’m not trying to bullshit you, I’ve never tried to bullshit you. And—and as I see it,” he said, his voice shaking a little, “the point is, there’s only you and me, here. It doesn’t matter whether the rest of the world thinks I’m Nearby Bay’s answer to Mel Flaming Gibson, and it’s irrelevant what I think: what do you think? That’s what matters.”

    “Yes. In a way I was avoiding the issue: I’m sorry,” said Sloane hoarsely. “I—I do think you’re very attractive, Cal. Um—it—it isn’t the point, is what I was trying to say.”

    “It is to me,” said Cal shakily. “I thought maybe I turned you off.”

    “Um—no. Um—what I mean is, I—I’ve been trying to take charge of my life, lately. Um... If I came to Muwullupirri for Easter, it might force me into making a choice before I’m ready to. I don’t want to do anything that we’d both regret, Cal.”

    “I wouldn’t regret it!” he said quickly.

    Sloane sighed. “Maybe not. But you’d be out on the property all day. I can’t even imagine me at Muwullupirri, frankly, Cal. I’d go crazy with nothing to do all day but clean the house and cook.”

    “We could work it out. You could help with the business side. Lots of wives do.”

    Sloane had gone bright red again. “Ye— Um, I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, here.”

    “No,” he said stolidly.

    Sloane bit her lip. Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes. You’re a bit like that. Cal. A bull at a gate. I—I can’t really cope with that.”

    “But—” Cal broke off. “All right, you need to take it at your own pace. I get it.”

    “Yes. And—and there are other considerations...”

    “Like that tit, Burgoyne?” he said grimly.

    “Um—well, I’m not sure. That hasn’t gone very far... But I think he might— Well, one point to consider is that the sort of life I might have with him is—is closer to the sort of thing I’m used to... City life.”

    They had reached her building: Cal accompanied her silently into the lobby.

    “Look,” he said, swinging her round to face him: “do you like me better than him?”

    Sloane’s jaw trembled. “Yes,” she said honestly. “A lot.”

    Cal swallowed loudly. “Good.”

    “You’re a—a much more honourable person, I suppose,” said Sloane lamely, “and—I suppose it’s your circumstances, so he’s not really to blame—but your goals in life seem more worthwhile.”

    “Jesus, Sloane, that’s not what I meant!” Cal shook her a little, not really realising he was doing it. “Do you want me more, or him?”

    “You,” admitted Sloane faintly, her eyes filling with tears.

    Regardless of the fact that they were standing in the public lobby of her trendy city building, Cal crushed her tightly against him and closed his eyes. “Thank Christ for that,” he said huskily.

    Sloane could hear his heart thudding frantically. She could also feel he was very aroused sexually: although she had always thought of him as an attractive man, and although just lately of course she’d realised that he was attracted by her, she hadn’t quite thought of Cal in that specifically physical way before...

    She looked up to say: “No, don’t,” but before she could speak, Cal covered her mouth with his.

    After a few heart-stopping moments, Sloane pulled away. “It’s too soon,” she said faintly.

    “Not for me,” he said simply.

    “No—um—” Sloane found she was looking at his erection. She looked hastily away. “I need time to—to think about everything.”

    Cal took a deep breath. “Yeah. Well, I’ll be on Muwullupirri when you’ve finished thinking.”

    “Yes,” she said faintly.

    “Um—and listen, if that bloody sister of yours says anything about coming over, it’s nothing to do with me!”

    Sloane gaped at him. “What?”

    “Bloody Kitten,” he said, going very red. “She was jabbering on about coming over to Lallapinda with some of those dim little mates of hers. Well, I never put her up to it, is all I wanted to say.”

    Sloane’s jaw shook. “Cal, if—if you let Kitten get you into her clutches again—”

    “I won’t!” he said loudly. “Bugger it, that’s what I’m trying to say!”

    There was a short pause.

    “Don’t you trust me?” he said, still very red.

    “Not so far as Kitten’s concerned: no. She can wind anything male round her little finger.”

    “Well, she can’t wind me! I’m trying to tell you, it’s all over, and I’ve got her out of my system!” he said angrily. “I wish I’d never mentioned it: it’s got nothing to do with how I feel about you, Sloane!”

    Sloane took a deep breath. “Maybe not. But it sounds to me as if we both need time to sort ourselves out and—and think about what we’re getting into, doesn’t it?”

    “No,” he said grimly. “But if that’s the way you want it, all right. I won’t push it. You think it over, Sloane. Only believe me, I wouldn’t get mixed up with your ruddy sister again for all the tea in China!”

    “No,” said Sloane uncertainly. “Um—well, I’d better go.”

    “Yeah. I think I’ll take off tonight, if I can get a flight.”

    “Um—yes,” she said numbly. “All right, then, Cal.”

    “Well—see ya,” he said awkwardly.

    Sloane waited for him to make a move in the direction of kissing her again, but he didn’t. “See ya,” she said firmly, turning on her heel and walking over to the lifts. She pressed the button and stared up at the indicator. When she worked up the courage to glance round, he’d gone.

    “Melodie and Jay and Nikki are just coming over for a couple of weeks,” said Kitten airily.

    “Yes,” replied Sloane grimly.

    “I thought I might stay on, actually,” said Kitten airily.

    “All RIGHT! I don’t CARE!” she shouted.

    “What’s up?”

    “Nothing, except that I thought you were focussing on the Lallapinda revenge?” said Sloane sourly.

    “I am. I’m gonna get Jay all geared up and then they’re all gonna go over and stay with Aunty Ingrid. They can launch themselves from there.”

    “At what?” said Sloane feebly, goggling at her.

    “At Graeme Pointer and Roderick Kent. And Neil Reardon, if Nikki still wants him.”

    “Kitten, it won’t work: Roderick Kent doesn’t look at anything less than a flaming princess; you ought to know, it was you that showed me that dumb picture of him with—”

    “Princesses and horseflesh,” she said on a smug note.

    “So?”

    “Aunty Ingrid’s first husband,” said Kitten smugly.

    “Kitten, that was yonks ago!”

    “But he still trains horses, doesn’t he? And I’ve found out that he trains some of the Kents’ horses!”

    “So?” said Sloane limply.

    “Well, Aunty Ingrid still keeps in touch, doesn’t she, because of Maddalena and Brucey.”

    “He can’t still be calling himself Brucey: he must be...” Sloane counted on her fingers. “At least twenty-one,” she concluded limply.

    Kitten shrugged. “Whatever. –’Member how fat and rosy-checked he was?” she beamed.

    “Uh—yeah, when he was about six! Are you seriously envisaging that Melodie’s gonna get Brucey or Maddalena to take her home with them to their father’s place and—and throw herself at Roderick Kent?”

    “Nope. You’re right about getting them to take her over to Crowsnest, though—dumb name, eh?” she noted by the by. “After that, Roderick Kent will have to make the running.”

    “Kitten, she’ll never do it! Not Melodie. I’m not saying you haven’t got her looking good; but Melodie? Holding a man at arms’ length while he makes the running?”

    “She’s very determined, you’d be surprised.”

    “I’d be down-right astonished,” said Sloane with a sigh. “And if you’re really serious about it, why aren’t you going with them?”

    Kitten looked mysterious. “I’m joining them later. Round about November, probably.”

    That would give her a good six months at Lallapinda. Sloane’s mouth tightened. “All right, just as you like.”

    “I may have news for you later,” she said airily.

    “All right! Go, if you’re going! But just make sure those three idiots have got return tickets!”

    “I have,” said Kitten smugly, departing.

    Dick and his eldest daughter were working in her little terracotta-tiled back yard. In between the April showers that meant they couldn’t leave the work outside, because the wind blew the rain in under the carport. Dick sanded the second-hand table industriously. “This’ll come up good, ya know.”

    “So you reckon,” said Sloane tiredly.

    “Whassup?” he said, sanding.

    “Nothing,” she replied, scowling horribly.

    “Look, Sloane, if bloody Kitten’s throwing herself at Cal Wainwright you’ve only got yourself to blame.”

    “She isn’t,” said Sloane tightly.

    “All right, tell me she’s gone over to Lallapinda to throw herself at Pete Dawkins!” he said, laughing hoarsely.

    “Hah, hah,” said Sloane dully.

    Dick sat back on his heels, sighing. “What is up, Sloane?”

    Sloane was working on an old chair that Dick claimed would look good with the table once they’d got them cleaned up. “Nothing. I just... I thought I’d made my choices,” she said grimly.

    “Oh?”

    “Cal Wainwright didn’t enter into my plans,” she said tightly. Dick didn’t say anything: she added on an exasperated note: “Look, I’ve known him all my life, Dad, and all of a sudden he turns up and asks me out of the blue to—to be the mistress of Muwullupirri!”

    “Did ’e?”

    “Not formally, no. I suppose that’s too much to expect. He made it pretty clear, though.”

    “Mm. Well, if Ma Wainwright’s really moving into a smaller house, what’s stopping you?”

    “The prospect of fifty years of boredom in the flaming Outback, Dad, and why you’re asking, I don’t know: you got out of it fast enough, yourself!”

    “Mm.” Dick looked thoughtfully at the table. “Didn’t have a decent joker offering to keep me in the standard to which for the rest of me natural, though. Mind you, if the idea of marrying Cal seems that boring to you, I wouldn’t,” he said mildly.

    Sloane folded her piece of sandpaper over carefully. “Not as such. I mean, not the—the physical side... I do fancy him.” she admitted.

    “Yeah, attractive fellow, isn’t he?” he said easily.

    “Mm. I just feel that... that he’s trying to rush me into it.”

    “Yeah. Well, on the one hand, it’s not too easy for a joker to ask a girl out for a few dates when he’s in one state and she’s in another. And on the other hand, he’s not that much of a spring chicken, is ’e? Probably doesn’t feel he’s got all that much time left. Think I’d be doing a bit of rushing, too, if it was me.”

    Sloane folded her sandpaper up carefully. “Mm. I hadn’t really thought... Mm. But he did spring it on me out of the blue. I don’t feel either of us have thought enough about it.”

    “No, well, don’t think too much. He’ll be fifty before long, ya know.”

    Sloane pleated her sandpaper. “Mm, I suppose he will.”

    “So it wouldn’t be fifty years of boredom with him in the Outback. Twenty if you’re lucky,” he said drily.

    “That’s really horrible, Dad!”

    “Nope, it’s realistic. Well, old Mr Wainwright hasn’t popped his clogs yet, that’s true, but he’s pretty much of a wreck, isn’t he? Strokes run in the family, ya know.”

    “Shut UP, Dad!” she shouted, bounding to her feet.

    “Life isn’t just a question of making choices,” said Dick in a vague voice. “Not always. Sometimes it’s a case of going with the flow.”

    Sloane’s jaw shook.

    “He could give you a bloody good lifestyle, ya know. Just because Ma Wainwright vegetates, wouldn’t mean you’d have to. Wouldn’t have to spend all your time on the property: get down to Adelaide every other weekend in the Cessna, take in the nightspots, such as they are: the casino, six-course dinner at the Hyatt. And when you weren’t doing that, you could entertain in style. Local M.P.s, state and federal, bloody Bob Dangerfield and Lady D. with brass knobs on, all the poncy Libs from Adelaide: they’d all jump at the chance of an invite to Muwullupirri, ya know.” He shrugged. “It’s not Lallapinda, but it’s the nearest you’ll ever get to being lady of the manor—”

    “SHUT UP!” she screamed. “I wouldn’t marry him for his position, what do you think I am?”

    “I dunno, Sloane. In fact, you could say I’m beginning to wonder. I thought being the mistress of Muwullupirri would be right up your alley, to tell you the truth. And that joker from Double Bay you seem to have got yourself mixed up with, well, he’s even older than Cal, by all accounts.” He slid the sandpaper experimentally up a table leg.

    “Cal’s NOT OLD!” shouted Sloane. She raced inside, slamming the door after her.

    Dick raised his eyebrows slightly. He sandpapered industriously. After a while he began to whistle. “Love, love me do...”

Next chapter:

https://thelallapindarevenge.blogspot.com/2022/11/outback-kitten.html